TOTAL
DEPRAVITY

The Word of God teaches us that all mankind since
the fall of Adam are born in a lost condition of spiritual death and depravity.
The doctrine of ORIGINAL SIN is the doctrine that the whole human race
sinned in Adam, who was by God's arrangement the federal head and
representative of all the race (Rom. 5:12). TOTAL DEPRAVITY is the
result of original sin. Men and women are not born innocent, or placed on a
probationary status until they reach the "age of accountability". We
were all born in a state of total depravity. That means:

1. WE WERE ALL BORN SINNERS. Sin is not
something we learn. It is what we are. At heart, at the very core of our being,
we are sinners. No mother ever had to teach her children how to lie, cheat,
covet, or steal. These evil things come from within (Mk. 7:21-23). The natural
heart is enmity against God. It can never be subject to God (Rom. 8:7). Man by
nature is a lost rebel, conceived in sin, shaped in iniquity, and straying from
God from the womb, ever speaking lies (Ps. 51:5; 58:3). Because we are all born
sinners –

2. WE WERE ALL BORN UNDER THE CURSE OF THE LAW
(Eph. 2:3). "The wages of sin is death!" Born in spiritual death,
under the sentence of physical death, and condemned to eternal death in hell,
every son and daughter of Adam is born a child of wrath, without Christ,
without God, having no hope.

3. WE WERE ALL BORN IN A STATE OF SPIRITUAL
DEATH. When Adam sinned in the garden he did not die physically, or
eternally, but he did die spiritually. And we all died in him (Rom. 5:12). That
means that men and women by nature have no link to God, no spiritual knowledge,
no spiritual ability (John 3:3-7). Until a person is born again by the power
and grace of God he cannot even see, much less enter into the kingdom of God.

4. SALVATION MUST BE THE WORK OF GOD ALONE (Eph.
2:8-9; Tit. 3:5). Man can do nothing good (Rom. 3:10-19). He cannot will
himself into a new creature! He must be made righteous. He must be made a new
creature. The only way he can be made righteous and made a new creature is for
God to do it. "So then, it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that
runneth, but of God that showeth mercy!"